This is a stupid blog post
You’re standing in an empty auditorium.
You’re at the front of the room. Behind the podium.
Someone’s offered to pay you five dollars for you to stand in this room and say whatever comes to mind.
You can say whatever you want, no matter how ridiculous, no matter how audacious. The freedom to say what’s on your mind, to say what needs to be heard, to be radical, or honest, or vulnerable.
No audience. No anxiety.
Speaking, and writing, for an audience is scary. Because we don’t want to do something or say something or write something that makes us look like an idiot.
There’s a lot of fear around saying something stupid, so we hold back. We experience stage-fright and choke up. Or we tell ourselves we have “writer’s block,” or that we don’t have any good ideas.
Of course, that’s not true. Because if someone offered to pay you five dollars to say something or write something in an empty room, you’d have no problem.
We’re not blocked. We’re merely afraid of doing something stupid.
Two quick fixes:
One is anonymity. Start an anonymous blog, or podcast, or portfolio. Say what you want until it’s good enough to share.
Or do what comedians have figured out. Stand in that literal or metaphorical room with that large crowd and say what comes to mind. Do it a hundred times. Try your best. Allow yourself to fail. Learn from your mistakes.
After you’ve humiliated yourself a dozen times, the fear will start to dissipate.
It’s scary stuff, but it works.
So that after you’ve done it a hundred times, you won’t be concerned with saying stupid things. Panic mode (and all the tension that comes with it) won’t be your go-to state. Instead, you’ll have a habit—a freedom—to say what you're thinking. To think fast on your feet. To improvise. And to keep doing it (and getting better at it) on your way to creating something original.
To be concerned, not with your internal dialogue, not with the exhaustive routine of trying to psyche yourself up or suppress your fear, but with your performance. With the difficult work of actually making an impact.
It turns out saying stupid things is a remarkably fast route to saying things that people actually want to hear.